Poetry

I’ll tell you a tale: one morning one morning I layin my uncomfortable six-foot small grave,I lay sulking about a somewhat too short-litlife both fruitful and dutiful.

It was death it was death like an inbreath fully inhaledin the grief of the world when at lastthere began to emerge a way out, alasthe in-snowing silence made any description difficult.

No eyes no matches and yet mathematically speakingI could still reach at a stretch a waspish whiteishlast seen outline any way up, which could well be my ownwere it only a matter of re-folding.

So I creased I uncreased and the next thing I knewI was pulled from the ground at the appointed hourand rushed to the nearest morgue to set out yet againfrom the bed to the floor to the door to the air.

And there was the car still there in its last known placeunder the rain where I’d left it, my husband etc.even myself, in retrospect I was still therestill driving back with the past all spread out already in front of me.

What a refreshing whiff with the windows open!there were the dead leaves twitching and tacking backto their roosts in the trees and all it requiredwas a certain minimum level of inattention.

I tell you, for many years from doorway to doorwayand in through a series of rooms I barely noticedI was humming the same tune twice, I was seeing the samethree children racing towards me getting smaller and smaller.

This tale’s like a rose, once opened itcannot reclose, it continues: one morningone terrible morning for maybe the hundredth timethey came to insert my third child back inside me.

It was death it was death: from head to footI heard myself crack with the effort, I leaned and criedand a feeling fell on me with a dull clangthat I’d never see my darling daughter again.

Then both my sons, slowly at firstthen faster and faster, their limbs retracted inwardssmaller and smaller till all that remainedwas a little mound where I didn’t quite meet in the middle. <

Well either I was or was not either living or deadin a windowless cubicle of the past, a mere8.3 light minutes from the present moment when at lastmy husband walked oh dear he walked me to church.

All in one brief winter’s day, bothbraced for confusion with much shy joy,reversed our vows, unringed our handsand slid them back in our pockets God knows why.

What then what then I’ll tell you what then: one eveningthere I stood in the matchbox world of childhoodand saw the stars fall straight through Jimmy’s binoculars,they looked so weird skewered to a fleeting instant.

Then again and again for maybe the hundredth timethey came to insert me feet first back into nothingcomplete with all my missing hopes—next morningthere was that same old humming thrum still there.

That same old humming thrumming sound that is eithermy tape re-winding again or maybe it’s starspassing through stars coming back to their last known places,for as far as I know in the end both sounds are the same.